Agility Global Health Solutions, a local medical scheme administrator and managed care service provider, has set up fully fledged operations in the Middle East through a joint venture to tap into the growing private health-care market in the region.
Through a partnership with Dubai Islamic Insurance and Reinsurance, also known as Aman Insurance, Agility expects to double annual revenue within three years. The joint venture, called Amity Health, covers all countries within the Gulf Co-operation Council.
Mike Collier, the chief executive of Agility, said despite the current turmoil in the Middle East, the region was wealthy and there was a desire to improve the lifestyle of people who lived there.
“There is legislation being pushed to introduce mandatory private healthcare insurance for everyone. Health care will still be free because contribution will be underwritten by government, but it is being pushed through private providers,” said Collier.
“We are going there because there is market growth but (they) are relatively inexperienced in managing health risk. In Dubai, one in five adults is diabetic, that is 20 percent of the population, we need to look at how do we keep the people healthy,” Collier said.
Amity Health began operating in December last year and it has built a network of more than 800 service providers.
It has contracts with 45 large employer groups and it expects to cover 30 000 lives by the end of the year.
Collier said it would grow rapidly thereafter as it expected to cover more than 1 million lives within three years.
Collier said the group believed that introducing medical savings accounts and wellness programmes incentivising members to stay healthy would draw more people.
“At the moment, there is no relationship between wellness and insurance and I think the market is prime for that. All the insurers who offered risk have been burnt because they did not structure the products accordingly,” said Collier.
Agility entered the Middle East market in 2006 when it began offering technology solutions to health insurers that assisted in managing risk in their health portfolio. Collier said Agility would use Dubai to grow its international operations.
The company expanded to Australia in 2004 where it was also a supplier of technology solutions to health funders. It has a presence in Hong Kong, Pakistan, Nigeria and India.
Collier said the firm would eventually take the joint venture model to all the aforementioned countries, working with local partners.
“Throughout Africa, people want better health. We have a plan for Hong Kong and we are working on a strategy for Pakistan ahead of India. Our partners in Dubai are talking about Turkey,” Collier said.
Although Agility expanded internationally long before talks about introducing the National Health Insurance (NHI) intensified in South Africa, Collier admitted that Agility was also driven by trying to mitigate the NHI’s risk to the business.
“The NHI has simply accelerated the need to mitigate the risk. We endorse the idea of better access and better health care for everyone but we can’t predict what the NHI will mean for our business,” he said.
Locally, the company employs 300 people and it administers Resolution Health, an open scheme that covers 140 000 lives. - Business Report